Question for God:
We seem to be in charge here: where are you?
A sermon dedicated to the memory of William Sloane Coffin, former pastor of Riverside Church, New York
Dr. David Thompson
July 4, 2010
Do you ever think how bizarre it is, that if there is a God, that human beings have so much freedom on this planet to do whatever we want?
Do you ever long for a God who would solve all our personal problems and be our friend? Someone we could reach out to and get real help? We do seem to be in charge on planet earth and so isn‟t it reasonable to ask where God is in all of this, or even to ask whether there is a God? Has God given us too much freedom? What do you think?
This is the 4th of July when we celebrate freedom in America
There is a joke about a prisoner who escaped from jail. The judge asked him “Why did you break free from prison?”
The fugitive replied; “Your honor I wanted to get married.”
The judge paused and then said; “You have quite the strange view of freedom!”
This past week I was sitting in court in the county jail watching all the proceedings going on. We seem to have quite a strange view of freedom when we put people in cages there the way we used to treat tigers at the zoo… I get a really strange feeling when I see people‟s freedom being taken away and see them treated like caged animals; or justice being reduced to punishment whether it makes any sense or not. In one Sacramento County Jail visit I saw a man sentenced to five years in state prison to be served as probation, for stealing $75 .00 of tiger shrimp. He was solemnly assured that if he broke any of the terms of probation prison was mandatory. Let‟s see! That is Five years at a cost to taxpayers of $50,000 per year per inmate in this case for a theft of $75.00 worth of shrimp? Have we turned a criminal justice system into a criminal punishment system? What have we done to freedom when we loose justice and mercy in our courts?
For instance ,where is the old adage that the punishment should fit the crime? Where is restitution? Rehabilitation? Restorative justice? Forgiveness?
Because without these things we are surely not the land of the free and the home of the brave…
One of the most compelling images of our being so much in charge on this planet at the moment is the footage of the spewing oil well beneath the Gulf. What kind of freedom is this? We get a beach cleaned up and a hurricane comes along and we have to do it all over again. We lost freedom
when that oil rig exploded…But we are still in charge. Where is God in that oil spill?
How about the economy being in and out of the tank, nervous markets, the USA urging spending, the other G8 nations cutting back? How about any real attempt at reform in Washington being subject to the gridlock and lobby lock of very powerful special interests? On this 4th of July are we really a free people or pawns of the powerful? Whatever we are, we still appear to be in charge for good or ill. There is no destiny driving us is there? Does God care about the economy? What do you think? Is God running the Dow Jones?
We have drug violence, gun violence and a Supreme court that permits handguns and knocks down the Chicago law by a five four margin along party lines even although there is on the ground proof that violence is lessoned by the ban. How free is Chicago now? This action may now be law but is it true freedom?
The now deceased Sloane Coffin, the great old lion of Riverside church in New York, in thinking about the injustice in the world, about greed and violence, was praying one day in Riverside main sanctuary and in the middle of the prayer he said: “God, you have given us too much freedom. We can‟t handle it!”
The religions have traditionally come down on the side of free will for human beings- that we are in fact free and to some degree in charge of our own affairs in this world. For Sloane Coffin we are too much in charge and we abuse the freedom given to us…
Hinduism is perhaps the most pessimistic of all religions in this matter when it says that human beings are like cows tied to a rope- the karmic debts and human nature bind us and the amount of free will we have to control our own destiny is the amount of freedom the rope allows. On a more optimistic note they say that as one progresses spiritually, the rope gets longer…
Buddhism teaches that the idea that we have absolute freedom of choice is foolish because this denies the reality of one‟s physical needs and circumstances. Equally incorrect they say is that we have no choice or that our lives are predetermined. To deny freedom would be to deny the efforts of Buddhists to make moral progress through our capacity to choose compassionate action they say.
Judaism is interesting because Jewish teaching is that free will is a product of the intrinsic human soul using the word „neshama‟ meaning „breath‟. Thus when God breathed into Adam he became a living free soul. But the ability to make a free choice is from the Hebrew word „yashid‟ which means the part of the soul which is united to God. God, for the devout Jew is the only being that is not hindered or dependent on cause or effect. True freedom of will therefore does not depend upon physical reality according to Judaism.
According to Islam free will is the main factor for human accountability in our actions throughout life. On the Judgment Day all actions taken by a person‟s free will are said to be counted as his or her own, not God‟s.
Perhaps
the most profound statement in Christianity is that found in St John‟s Gospel, in the mouth of Jesus: “The truth
shall set you free.” Thus according to a saying attributed to Jesus truth and freedom are linked…
One of the most powerful arguments that the atheist can make is that there is no evidence that God interferes in human affairs. People pray to be healed from cancer, but they die. People are cruel to other people even to the extremes of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, but God does not intervene. We are destroying the planet in many ways and if there was a God the Deity would not permit us to trash the creation. There would be Divine Intervention all the time keeping the planet on an even keel. If there was a God of love in the world why would that God permit so much suffering pain, hardship, war, torture and death? These things when added up, they say, show that there is no Deity and that we human beings are on our own.
The agnostic, while admitting the doubts of the atheist and having many of the same problems, is not prepared to close the door on a God, preferring to be open to the question. Many an agnostic acknowledges the apparent design of the planet and its complexity, but is not ready to be definitive or absolute when it comes to the idea of a Creator or not. So are we truly alone in the universe? Are the atheists right? Or should we be agnostic? What do the religions say?
All the main religions have what we call today „anecdotal evidence‟ for the existence of God. This resides in stories like the parting of the Red sea, the giving of the ten commandments, the gift of the inspired Quran, enlightenment of the Buddha; the miracles of Jesus including the resurrection, the revelations of the Sikh gurus. This carries forward into the present day with stories of miraculous healings and deliverances and answers to prayer.
These however must also be balanced with stories from the Holocaust, from wars and from tragic deaths and rank injustice in the world. It certainly would be hard to argue on any level that God was in charge of human affairs…at least in a direct sense of control.
Interestingly to me is the fact that in some way or other the major religions all seem to teach, through the doctrine of free will, that we are in charge here on earth, if not fully in charge, we are at least responsible for our actions which taken together are most significant. Take Global warming for instance. Many individual actions when taken together affect the entire planet and the future viability of the species of life on earth. That is huge! It is also huge responsibility! And a huge opportunity!
If there is a God why do we have so much freedom and responsibility? Is there an answer to Sloane Coffin‟s question?
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard argued that God has to draw Himself back in order that we can even exist. It would have been easy for God to completely dominate us. That however is not what we find here on earth. As Sloane Coffin argued we appear to have too much freedom, in fact so much that we appear to be in charge here. So if we are in charge, why are we? If there is a Creator what might the plan be?
To me there is one simple but very profound answer to this question. I believe that we were created by and for love. And love cannot be forced or compelled. We have to be truly free in order to love. We have to take the consequences of our own actions for good or ill and also the actions of others that
affect us. If we did not, if in fact God interfered all the time we would not be free to love or to love freely. So love has a price- the upside and downside of our awesome freedom. Kierkegaard also argued that God, in order to be a good God, had to give us the best and most costly gift of them all – our freedom. Any God who did not give us the greatest gift of them all would be a lesser God than the real God of love.
But do not think that because we have such incredible freedom that God has abandoned us to our fate. I think that it is quite different from that. In fact I think that it is incredibly more complex than abandonment or interference or other simplistic views.
What if prayer did in fact make a difference in outcomes in a world where humans were free to be in charge? What if as Martin Luther King argued that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”? What if Einstein is right when he said:
I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice. God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
What if our intentions affect reality even down to the movement of random particles? What if Omnipotence has servants everywhere? What if there are spirit worlds we don‟t yet know about?
What if Barry Neil Kaufman is right that we can choose a user friendly universe as a world view? He says; “to choose such a vision would be to choose a God biased in our favor, one who set the universe in motion to support us and our wants…in my life I have chosen the user friendly perspective including a belief in a happy and loving God trying to help
me be happy and loving…In fact, the more I deepen my conviction about a user friendly universe the more evidence materializes that leads me to believe such a perspective is valid and true.”
What if this planet is a place for making our souls, a place for growth, deep friendships and learning that Love is more powerful than hate or fear?
What if we caught the dream of a progressive humanity here in America? We started so well in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
What if Roosevelt‟s four freedoms once again became America‟s watchwords and purpose?
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
This work has yet to be done and as we celebrate the 4th of July when America declared independence, we surely need to dream of a freedom that frees others in the world for which we are all responsible as one species.
Love calls us to do this. Only the truth will set us free in every area of life. In our relationships, in our bereavements, when our marriages crash, when we are out of work and out of sorts, when we drill oil wells, when we deal with global warming or world financial markets or whatever we do in our daily lives, only the truth will set us free!
We need to get facts not fictions, the whole picture not half a loaf.
We need to abandon useless dogmas that bind us and ideologies that do not serve us or all creatures living on the planet. We need to seek the truth of peace not war. In order to do that We need to mature as a species and become compassionate lovers of all creatures great and small.
We need the best science in every field. We need to seek the truth in every religion and philosophy. We need to do so in such a way as the native Americans so eloquently teach us, that when it comes our time to see the Creator face to face, we can look at the Creator with straight eyes, and
thank The great One, for the freedom to live, to learn and to love the whole of creation and each other unconditionally.
A few days after the dark disillusioning day of September the 11th 2001, when all of America was in shock and mourning particularly in New York, a group of 20 New York High school girls, players on a soccer team, boarded the D train to Manhattan from the Bronx. They decided to sing along together favorites from Bob Dylan to Christina Aguilera. One of the girls could sing, the rest made up for their lack of talent with volume and enthusiasm. Their fellow passengers shot them disgruntled looks and some were downright hostile. Only a few smiled at the girls.
An older man got on the train with a stubbly beard and ragged clothes. He held a coffee cup emblazoned with the words „I love New York‟ on it. He then announced to the passengers that he was going to sing a couple of songs. No one on the train looked up, in fact most settled further into their seats or hid behind their newspapers or feigned sleep. All except the girls, who watched him closely. He began to sing in a rich beautiful voice “Joy to the world‟. The girls were so carried away that they joined in the singing. After they finished there was some clapping. The newspapers were down, and the animation on the passenger‟s faces showed that they had crossed over into a different world.
The old man sang several more songs and decided to end his medley with „God Bless America‟ . While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free, Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer. "
Not only did the twenty girls join in but the whole train car began to sing along. The strains of the song filled the car
and when the doors opened at the station the sound tumbled out into the station itself. Many people left their own cars to see what was happening in the girl‟s car. One of the girls said: “The impromptu chorus on the D train, a medley of voices and spirit was real and marvelous. Its significance became clearest to me when I noticed a woman holding a baby in her arms, singing through the tears that were streaming down her cheeks.
She says: The power of this moment will be with me forever. A moment when a group of strangers, all New Yorkers, tough and jaded, connected with a group of High school girls and a ragtag homeless person, and allowed their voicesand their hearts- to be as one.”
Suddenly on the D train, unconditional love, only possible when we are truly free, was combined with a sense that we are not alone. That although we are in charge and possess an awesome freedom God can join us in that freedom and can bless America and make America a blessing to the world…
We can trust that the greatest gifts of love and freedom are indeed intentional gifts from a God who loves us. A God who is calling us towards our full humanity which will allow us one day to say with all our hearts In God we trust.